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What hardware does not support Linux?

I never really see hardware lacking Linux support mentioned, which got me caught by surprise when a computer with a Broadcom network card couldn't use the card. What other hardware don't work with Linux?

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  • Probably not the kind of hardware you're thinking of but I have an old Roland synthesizer, an Edirol SD-90, that did not work on Linux. Now, I didn't expect it to given the hoops I had to jump through just to get it to work on modern windows. So Linux seemed out of the question already. But can be a big deal depending on what you use your computer for.

  • On the peripheral end, ElGato. You can usually get their stuff to work but they provide little to no support, usually have issues to work out, and you'll always be relying on third party replacements for their software.

    I got a stream deck plus with the xlr dock, since even though I quit content creation I like what it provides and have no reason to downgrade my mic, but the thing has been a headache and a half ever since I switched to cachyOS.

  • About 10% of the hardware in my 2016 MacBook Pro. Twice I've tried to install Debian on that Satan spawn using various gists online, and each time I ended up deciding it wasn't worth the time

    Every other piece of hardware I've tried in the past works without fail, that MacBook irks me.

  • I had an issue with an old Lenovo X260 laptop. The onboard bluetooth device was showing as not being present if the wireless device was loaded. I could have one or the other, but not both. BT/Wifi was being supplied by the same M.2 card, so as soon as a module loaded (the wireless loaded first I guess) it prevented it from being used by another module. I'm not sure if there was an actual fix to that, though. I had a spare USB bluetooth dongle so I just ran that instead.

  • Often the hotkeys on laptops for screen brightness, mute, etc will either not work or be wonky, on my HP Elitebook on Debian distros the brightness keys both mute the speakers instead, they work fine on Fedora though.

96 comments